


Succor

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Affection, Angst, Banter, Established Relationship, Intimacy, M/M, Post Finale, Reminiscing, Rimming, closeness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:38:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6186208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Is there something you’d like to talk about, Will?”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Many things,” Will says. “Many, many things. But ‘like’ isn’t the right word for it. ‘Need’ is better suited.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“What is it you need to discuss?” Hannibal asks, yielding an allowance to Will’s tone, his words drawn long by the painkillers given to ease his healing. “You know my door is always open to you.”</i>
</p>
<p>A post finale coming to terms between our two stubborn and beautiful men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Succor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Floating_Above_Myself](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Floating_Above_Myself/gifts).



> Thank you thank you thank you to our tireless beta [Noodle!! ](http://noodle%20the%20elephant.tumblr.com/)

Hannibal notices every touch. He remembers the graze of every fingertip and the warmth of every sigh. He spends hours watching Will sleep, stretched on his side beside Hannibal, taking up only a fraction of the side of the bed he has claimed. Hannibal watches. He never reaches to touch him.

In the early mornings, Will’s voice strikes clearly, like a crystal glass against silver, and Hannibal’s purr supports it in answer. They live, now, as comfortable as tragedy makes one. There is a trust there that the worst is not yet to come but already over. There is a fearlessness to being, now, that wasn’t there before.

“I hardly asked you to participate,” Hannibal says, bringing the cup to his lips and testing the heat of the coffee within with the barest stroke of his tongue. “Until the Dragon, you were merely an observer. The only one to see clearly.”

Will regards him across his own mug, a heavy ceramic thing already chipped on the side pressed against his lips. He breathes a laugh across it, a sound so faint it’s more seen in the swirl of steam than actually heard. “You’re joking.”

Hannibal tilts his head, a curious smile gathering beneath his eyes rather than on his lips.

“You’re not joking,” Will says. His brow creases, and he takes a sip of his coffee. Still too hot, he sucks in a breath between his teeth and leans forward further on the counter, elbows against the pristinely polished tile. “You didn’t ask me to participate. You insisted on it.”

“An invitation is not insistence.”

“One, no,” Will agrees. “A dozen? More? It becomes hard to ignore.”

“But ignore you still can,” Hannibal points out. “The human mind has an incredible capacity for choice and willpower. Sometimes even a dozen requests and insistences will hardly do more than have the person raise a brow and carry on. Not you.”

“You forced my hand.”

“I watched you become, on your own, the incredible creature that you are today, Will, nothing more.” Hannibal’s eyes narrow further and he braves the coffee again. Beyond the window, the wind whips the trees into a frenzy of whispers. Then it passes, leaves left silent once more. “And you are incredible.”

Will offers a wan smile, patronizing and brief, but lacking in real malice. It’s too early for that, and his ribs ache no matter how he sits. He skims a hand along the bandages that line his body - again - beneath his undershirt, and sits back to adjust into another position. No, still no better.

“A seed sown to the wind might find soil,” Will says. “It might find itself in dark earth, plowed deep by passing feet. With the right rain and the right sun, it might grow and thrive into its whole potential. More likely, a seed sown to the wind will land on pavement or ground in which it can’t take root. But a seed planted thoughtfully, protected from the elements and nourished in its growth, will always become,” he says, lingering on the word.

Will stretches, as best he can, grimacing at the pain of knitting bones and scarring skin. “Who planted you, Hannibal?”

Brown eyes raise and gaze at Will through the thin blonde strands that slip over them. For a moment, neither speak, not the fisherman nor the seed once planted in a dire winter. Then Hannibal sets his mug to the counter and slips his fingertips to the marble, tracing a deep groove of jagged grit.

“I suppose it is honest to say my family did,” he begins, allowing a smile for the scoff that comes as his reply. “And their departure from this world watered me. My sister's murder gave me roots.” Will says nothing. He waits. He watches Hannibal trace the grit and press his thumb against it as though to smooth it out. “Her meat fed my growing leaves and forced them upward through the snow I had been determined to die in.”

Will’s gaze lingers on Hannibal’s thumb, but his attention does not. The absent gesture seems strangely nervous, an uncharacteristic tension requiring some small movement to ease its strain. Hannibal didn’t kill his sister. Will doesn’t insult him by asking if he did.

But he partook of her, and the clarification in his admission does not sit any easier.

“That was the first time,” Will asks, and Hannibal hums his assent. Pressing his fingers against his eyes, Will holds them there until he sees stars, seeking through the darkness for some revelation, some clarity. He shakes his head. The answer doesn’t come readily, and so he says, softly, “It was your choice - taking her into you, to keep her safe.”

Hannibal’s hand pauses in its tracing, and spreads to push its heat to the stone beneath. Then he removes it from the counter entirely and sweeps up his coffee mug once more.

“When one can only trust themselves, they can entrust the most precious of things only to their own judgement and discretion. I was created, and made the decision to grow. Mischa was integral in that, and I will never take that credit away from her memory.”

Will regards the man with nothing short of bewilderment but says nothing. Hannibal allows him the time to think and to let the words settle.

“I grew from the need to protect and the capacity to do so. My invitations came at the hands of the rudest senders. I could hardly sink so low as to ignore their insult.”

Bringing his mug to his lips, Will finds that the heat scalds his mouth and his nose is filled with the scent of unpalatable bitterness. He lowers it again without drinking, and folds his fingers around it, arranging them to interlace. A hesitant glance lifts, in an instant taking a snapshot of Hannibal’s posture and carriage, and finding no declaration of offense in his form.

“You had a feast,” Will says. “In her memory.”

Hannibal arches his back in a languid stretch and sets his arms wide on the counter, leaning between.

“I made the choice to never be hungry again.”

Will ducks his head, muting a smile that appears despite his best attempt to hide it. His chest aches, with a pain not his own. Memories he’s never experienced bleed into his system and raise his heart rate. “I’ll resist the obvious comparison to wearing clothing made of curtains when you say that,” he manages, as Hannibal’s eyes narrow in a smile of his own.

“How very kind.”

Easing the tension with a sigh, Will brings his coffee-warmed hand to the back of his neck. It’s hard to imagine. Impossible, really, except that it happens anyway no matter how he tries to avoid it. A child, alone and frightened, his only remaining family member brutally murdered. A desperate act born of terror to save her in the only way his shock could reason.

Vengeance.

Violence.

Vanquishment.

“Will you help me change my bandages later?” Will asks, forcing a sharp breath into his lungs, and releasing it slowly. “I might go lie down again.”

“Of course.” As usual, Hannibal makes no move to touch Will first. He finishes his coffee as the younger man slowly tests his muscles with gentle pulls and twists and soft puffs of air. When he slides to his feet, grimacing a little, Hannibal doesn't follow. He waits and he considers, gazing into the marble winter on the counter top. 

When next they speak, it's pushing on twilight. Will lays curled on the couch with a book, and Hannibal pens a letter at the table.

“You’ve made exceptions in your routines.”

Hannibal’s pen pauses, and after a beat, resumes again its quiet scratching. “Have I?”

“You’ve hunted outside your preferred structure and crudeness.”

Hannibal’s eyes narrow in pleasure. “And rudeness,” he agrees.

“Including those who aren’t,” Will considers. He turns a page, paper rasping against his chest where he holds his book propped. The fire they’ve lit to chase away the outside chill crackles and snaps, popping apart the silence between them. After a moment, Hannibal lowers his pen to the desk. A breath pushed past curved lips dries his ink, but his eyes remain upward, focused on the man lying sprawled across the sofa.

“Is there something you’d like to talk about, Will?”

“Many things,” Will says. “Many, many things. But ‘like’ isn’t the right word for it. ‘Need’ is better suited.”

“What is it you need to discuss?” Hannibal asks, yielding an allowance to Will’s tone, his words drawn long by the painkillers given to ease his healing. “You know my door is always open to you.”

Will snorts, grinning a little. He shakes his head and pushes his palm against his eye. The pages of his book slip closed without being marked, and he sets it aside. “If we’re going to play doctor,” Will says, “you can at least come help me change my bandages.”

Hannibal only inclines his head in answer before standing from his seat. Will hardly moves as Hannibal passes him, he hardly moves when Hannibal returns with clean bandages and a bottle of salve. He sits up and peels his shirt off, a wince as the motion stretches his muscles just beyond his comfort level.

Will draws a hand through his hair as cool hands settle to his skin and begin to work his bandages free. There is an intimacy with healing. There is an intimacy with helping another heal. Memories of injury mark with permanence into flesh, as pain eases slowly into wholeness again. Will sucks his lips into his mouth before sighing them free.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

Hannibal allows himself a smile where Will cannot see him and runs his hands clinically over his back, where the bruises are deepest. There is no new swelling, no seeping from the stitches, no bad smell. The doctor hums his approval and coaxes Will to lift his arms so he can remove the last of the stretchy cloth. Will took the worst of the fall, with broken ribs and deep cuts, as rough waves pinned him to rocky shore. Hannibal took the worst of their battle, nursing still the gunshot in his stomach.

“Tell me,” Hannibal says at last, taking the salve and warming some between his palms.

Will's breath becomes vocal, a sustained hum as Hannibal spreads his palms against his skin. He isn't afraid anymore. He isn't wary of the man who administers care to him now, no more than he's wary of himself. He's seen both their truth, illuminated in ripples of scarlet through lines of leaded black. He knows the stained glass pieces, fragments of a whole, that once assembled form their being.

"I don't know if I'm in the right state of mind for this," Will says, shoulders curling forward to bare his back more beneath Hannibal's hands.

"What better excuse than medication to forgive unintentional slips of tongue?"

"Like talking about my wife," Will says, brows raising as he looks back across his shoulder. "My son. I'm curious, Hannibal. What was their crime? What was their misstep that so affronted you? Was it because they loved me, or was it because I allowed them to?"

“They stood in the way of your becoming,” Hannibal reasons, smiling when Will immediately sees through it.

“Bullshit. They stood in the way of manipulating and isolating me.”

“Could I have?” Hannibal muses, working the salve gently but deliberately into a bruise. “From behind the plastic wall that kept me imprisoned?”

“Your choice.”

“My reaction,” he corrects, “to your attempt to isolate yourself. A part of you loved them, and deeply. Yet another gnawed at you that it was wrong. Something was out of place in your happy scenario.”

“Nightmares,” Will says. “Memories.”

“Normalcy,” Hannibal suggests. “A societal expectation of normalcy that did not fit with your own understanding of it. That was their offence to me. Their attempt to mold you into a creature of habit and laziness.”

Will grimaces, hissing past bared teeth as the ointment stings across his stitches. The second sweep finds Hannibal’s hand caught. Will’s fingers dig against his wrist, and slowly he turns to face him.

“And you knew better,” Will says.

“Do you not agree?”

“I disagree,” he says, clipping the words curt, “that you had the right to make that decision for me. For them. I was happy, Hannibal…”

“You were bored.” His tone is patient, but Will can hear the threads of it thinning with every word. “Were you fulfilled, then - happy, then - you’d never have come to me.”

“It was a favor.”

“To whom?”

“To Jack. To the families being butchered. It was meant to be an epilogue.”

“Did Jack force you to the field? Did he threaten your life and your family if you refused?” Hannibal asks. He turns his wrist in Will’s hand and sets his fingertips to Will’s pulse. “Or did you choose to return? Did you choose to leave your loving wife and happy son, your home in the woods, your dogs and fishing poles?”

Will says nothing. His speeding pulse speaks for him.

“You chose, because you knew that you could breathe in those nightmares only when you controlled them, and never when they controlled you. You chose because this is who you are.” Hannibal’s smile is almost loving, eyes warm and breathing even. “I needn't have interfered for you to choose this on your own. You are, and always have been, remarkable.”

Will’s argument dies in his throat, bottom lip snared between his teeth as he tries to free them, Hannibal’s fingertips pressing warmth against the shuddering pulse Will can’t control. He doubts that Hannibal would have so readily let him live, had he declined Jack’s offer and stayed in Maine. He doubts moreso that the tenuous peace he found could have lasted another winter, when already he spent so many increasing hours pacing the house at night, waiting for another letter to come.

Their courtship, however strained, would not have ceased until one or the other ceased in their existence.

“Molly knew,” Will says, when for long enough the sounds of the fire filled the silence between them. Hannibal relaxes his grip and Will relents his own in turn. “She knew before I ever let myself imagine coming back.”

“A wise woman, then,” Hannibal remarks. “You have always sought a mirror, to show you what you refuse to see in yourself.”

Their hackles lower. Their risen hairs smooth again. Bared teeth disappear behind their lips and Will turns again, brow shadowed in its furrows, as he turns his back towards Hannibal again. Rain spatters snapping sharp against the windows. The storm that has found them housebound for days sighs relentless wind through leafless branches.

Will arches when Hannibal’s arms wrap around his chest, a bandage spread between his fingers. He holds his breath and Hannibal waits, lips so close to Will's bare shoulder that his breath spreads warmth over goose-pimpled skin.

"You can go without these now," Hannibal says. "Your bones are mended. Your wounds all but sealed."

With something like a laugh, cheeks uncomfortably warm, Will turns his head enough to see Hannibal's pale hair across his shoulder. "I feel like they're the only thing holding me together sometimes."

Without a word, Hannibal sets the cloth to Will’s skin and begins to bind him. This ritual, too, between them is an intimacy deeper than any Will shared with another. Wordless and slow, entirely clinical but for the occasional touch to his skin that Will knows to be unnecessary but always welcome.

“Beverly Katz was hardly a hindrance,” Will whispers. He feels Hannibal’s hands slow in their careful application of the bandage. The doctor does not stop, however. Will waits until he can feel the final tug to tighten the cloth around him before taking a breath to repeat himself.

“Ms. Katz was a good woman,” Hannibal interrupts him quietly. “A clever woman. And a cruel necessity.”

“She was the only one who believed me,” Will says. “The only one who stood by me. Don’t,” he says suddenly, cutting off the insistence he knows is coming. “You’re the one who put me there. Standing by my jail cell isn’t the same.”

“You knew her dedication to you, moreso to justice. You knew her persistence. Why send her to me?”

“I didn’t send her to you, Hannibal. I sent her after you.”

“Splitting hairs.”

“That isn’t funny.”

“No,” Hannibal agrees. “But Ms. Katz was as in control of her actions then as you are of yours now. Her interpretation, not your suggestion, got her -”

“Maimed,” Will hisses. “Mutilated. You humiliated her.”

“I did no such thing,” Hannibal tells him softly. “As Ms. Katz understood you, she was one of the few to respect me. I showed her the same kindness.”

“By killing her.”

“We all die. Few of us die in a way that reflects the truth of our lives.”

Will spreads his hand across his eyes, holding a low sound deep in his throat. It starts to build into a laugh, a sob, some outburst for which he no longer has the energy and then it settles. His breath hitches, once.

“And Abigail?”

Hannibal stops moving. For the first time since he had neared Will this evening, his actions still to nothing and his breath quiets. He makes no excuses. He makes no grand statements. For a moment, Hannibal says nothing at all. Then he simply walks away, taking with him Will’s soiled bandages and the salve to put away.

“Hannibal.”

He stops again, in the doorway, keeping from Will’s sight how white his knuckles have become, keeping from his ears the stilted sound of his breath. It returns to him more slowly, more unsteadily than he would prefer it. He finds that he can do nothing to make it hurry.

Abigail was a punishment. Hurt driving the movements of Will’s blade, spite spilling blood across the floor. Unlike Molly, who stood between them in theory, unlike Ms. Katz, who stood between them legally… Abigail stood between them emotionally, a bridge that in his insult Hannibal could see no other way but burnt. She was a bystander caught between forces of nature. She was a lamb caught between wolves.

Hannibal draws a breath enough to fill him, and with it says, “I’m sorry, Will.”

He leaves before the small sound Will makes can resonate through him and bolt him to the floor. There is a squeak of leather as Will settles back to the couch, and then nothing more. Hannibal does not see Will at dinner, nor call for him to come, and the substantial safehouse in which they’ve settled to lick their wounds now seems to hold the outside storm inside it.

When Hannibal’s door opens at night, casting dim light across the bed, he blames it on the wind. Instincts honed to know and recognize one human being above all others keep him from immediate return to sleep and so he rests, quiet and still, as Will’s silent feet approach. Will moves from behind, deliberate motions as he sets his weight to the bed and takes his time to make himself comfortable. His breathing doesn’t take long to even from the gentle pained catches that settling brought forth. Then it is as any other night, between them.

“You knew before I did,” Will murmurs after a while, voice low enough that the storm outside almost sweeps it away. Hannibal says nothing, he just breathes. How can he explain to a man still tense with his anger that a mate knows what is best for their other half? How can he explain to Will that it has been a test of patience and love getting him to realize his own destiny, sacrificing so much to get there together.

To get here, together.

All the nights they’ve laid together - never two in a row, and never facing - Hannibal has laid still as Will curled against him, moved only when Will thrashed away from him in sleep. He has never grasped the hand that falls against his stomach when Will wraps a heavy arm across him. They have never discussed this. They have never kissed. Their touches have only been those under the guise of other movements that provide an excuse to discredit it accidental should the other react poorly.

Hannibal’s heart stops when Will’s lips brush his shoulder. It starts again when Will’s fingernails curl against his chest. He sighs out hard when Will scrapes firm marks across his skin, leaving pink lines in their wake, and grasps his palm before they can turn pink to red.

“Will…”

“Don’t. I don’t want to talk anymore.” His lips click as they part, held open against Hannibal’s shoulder. Closing slowly with teeth dragged along hard bone, Will curls his fingers around the hand that holds his own. This is the only way that Hannibal does not yet know him. His body remains the only place in which Hannibal has not yet taken him personally. Knives and saws, needles and food were all proxies. Will swallows dry, and whispers.

“I want you to know me, Hannibal.”

Hannibal shivers, eyes closed and lips pressed tight together. With a swallow he parts them and allows his breath to shudder free. There is a trust in understanding, and allowance. To touch and press and penetrate. It is a gateway to intimacy. It is something Hannibal had never thought Will would allow him. 

He turns slowly, finding Will so close. His eyes are wide, pupils dark and huge within their rings of light blue. He hardly blinks as he watches Hannibal and Hannibal does the same. Curious, cautious, both of them timing their hearts by the one they feel beating against their hands, both of them timing their breaths to the other’s. 

“Will.” His name is a worship, a forgiveness, a vindication. The name that fills Hannibal entirely and sates him in every way, and now the man to whom it belongs leans nearer and parts his lips against Hannibal’s jaw. His eyes close. He tilts his head.

The cleave together as desperately as they did upon the cliff’s edge and with just as much relief. Will drags Hannibal’s hand to his hip and slides his arm around his neck, mouthing kisses against his jaw, his chin, the corner of his lips. A hesitation holds him here, an agony coiling tight as thoughts flood quickly to all of those that Hannibal has harmed with his words, his intimacy, his teeth. Will’s mouth lingers over the precipice of so many others’ downfall.

He isn’t afraid of falling anymore.

They tangle together, lips crashing rough and receding to spill sighs into the air. Tongues enmesh and their breath hisses hot against the other’s cheek. Hannibal grasps Will by his thigh, shoving their bodies flush, and snaring Hannibal’s hair between his fingers, Will bares his throat and catches his breath against it, smearing kisses in his wake.

It is destruction, as creation always is, rough and filthy and breathless. Neither yield for the other, both beautifully proud and loved by their other half for it. In the end, strength beats sleuth, and Will’s back arches from the bed as Hannibal holds him down to it.

They know each other in every sense but taste, and as Hannibal presses hot kisses down Will’s chest, over the bandages and to his soft stomach, he groans. The scar tissue is smooth and too-warm, and Hannibal takes his time tasting and cherishing it. He did this. He claimed this. Will survived this and came to him, in the end.

After everything. 

He marks every inch of scar tissue with kisses. When Will trembles, squirming in want and need and discomfort and desire, Hannibal releases his wrists and presses their palms together. Their fingers lace and squeeze. He reclaims this mark he made, and all at once, begins amends to the man upon whom he made it. There will be no more scars like this, dug like fangs through the other’s skin, but those they have, they have earned.

Will curses and curves upward as Hannibal works lower. Releasing his fingers, Will sets his own to Hannibal’s hair instead and grasps him hard, sleek strands spilling silver in his fists. He lifts his hips when Hannibal slides his boxers down, revealing a dark thatch of hair and his thickening cock, and when Hannibal breathes in the unadulterated scent of his partner, he’s dizzied by it.

He prays Will’s name against him again, begging benediction from the man who has finally found his godhood. Will grants the beseechment with a moan, bony hips angling high towards the ceiling. Hannibal catches him by the thighs, and Will huffs a laugh as he’s lifted.

“What are you…”

“Let me,” Hannibal breathes, overcome by the smell of him, the sensation of him. He could never have predicted this - imagined it, perhaps, but never predicted. He has wanted this man - on his table, in his bed, against him - with every conviction matched since he brought him breakfast in that dark motel.

Hannibal sets Will’s legs over his shoulders and uses his thumbs to spread him. Though Will’s cock jerks in pleasure, curious and aching, he squirms to get away. Another curse earns a clucked tongue in gentle reprimand.

“Trust me,” Hannibal beseeches him next, and without another word he buries his face between Will’s legs and kisses the warmest, most intimate part of him with such reverence that Will forgets, for a moment, how to breathe.

He gasps. Breath rattling, Will arches upward like a drowning man seeking surface, but finds only another stroke of tongue crashing over him. It feels wrong. Dirty. An exposure of the rawest kind, revealing him in a way he never imagined he would enjoy so much. Will’s heels dig against Hannibal’s back and even against the tension in his chest and the straining of newly-healed skin, he bends nearly onto his shoulders to present himself for this devouring.

Hannibal’s lips circle and suck, clicking obscenely against his opening. Every lick twitches stiffening in Will’s cock, lifting it from his belly. He pulls Hannibal’s hair and the low rumble he produces with this movement resonates down to the hot, coiling snare gathering tight in Will’s stomach.

It is filthy and divine. It is dizzying. Will's moans grow into demands, loud and aching, breaking into curses or whimpers of need. He feels like he's drowning and Hannibal is the only grounding he has.

As he has always been.

As he always will be.

Will moans Hannibal’s name and chokes as he feels a hot tongue slip between his cheeks and inside, deeper than he would have thought possible, tickling and tempting and nearly too good. He doesn’t dare tell him to stop. He doesn’t want him to stop. He wants to be devoured, swallowed whole - savored with the same reverence that Hannibal has reserved for those he has most despised and those he has most loved.

Will has been both to him, in equal measure. It seems strangely fitting that their consummation would involve consumption.

When Will climaxes, he takes a breath as if he’s never filled his lungs before. Sharp and sudden, his body clenches, suspended tight above the mattress as his climax crescendoes and hot spurts spill across his belly, his scar, the bandages that hold him together. When the wave ebbs he nearly collapses, but for the firm hands beneath him that lower him to the bed.

He wipes away the hot tears from his eyes and laughs against his hand. “Don't you dare tell me something fucking sappy, like how I taste divine,” he mumbles, turning his head away as Hannibal nuzzles his wet cheek. The doctor just hums against him.

“Then I shan't tell you,” he agrees, smiling when that pulls another laugh from Will beneath him. Pliant and spent, exquisite in his arousal and need, Hannibal could look at him forever. He could spend a lifetime studying the aspects of this Will, Will as Hannibal has always known him to be, and it would not be wasted.

“Shall I clean you?” Hannibal asks him, voice warm and low as he presses it to Will’s throat. “So you can rest?”

“Rest?” Will lifts a brow and tilts his head back to the doctor, catching him gently by the jaw to hold him still. “We will rest when we're finished,” he tells him.

And what can Hannibal do but obey?


End file.
